travel goal: visit all fifty states

There’s no doubt in my mind that my American passport is powerful, and I should use it to go see the rest of the world, but I also feel that there is a lot of power in getting to explore your own country. For me, it has never been enough to just visit America’s world famous locations. Sure, New York City is phenomenal (I live here for a reason!) and Seattle remains high on my to-do list.

But what about those other places in between? What about the mountains of Montana, the swamps of south Florida, and the shoreline of Oregon? What about the smaller states—Vermont, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire—up in the Northeast? What about the larger ones—Nevada, Wyoming, and New Mexico—west of the Mississippi? I want to see all of these places, which is why I’ve decided to make it a goal of mine to visit all 50 states during my lifetime.

So the question becomes what does “visiting” a state mean? My definition for the purpose of this list is staying in a state for at least 24 hours and seeing something of note, whether it is an established attraction like the North Rim of the Grand Canyon or something a little more obscure like the first paved road in America in a little town, Bellefontaine, Ohio. I also need to be able to fully remember my visit, which eliminates a lot of the places that I visited as a young child.

I’ve done well so far. I’ve been to 26 of the 50 states to date but there is still a lot of traveling to be done! I plan to continue building out this list as I visit new states.

Alabama: Birmingham